Safi Qurashi will immediately resume a hunger strike if found guilty and sent back to jail after a new criminal charge was filed against him by developer Nakheel, the British businessman told Arabian Business.
Qurashi spent two-and-a-half years in a Dubai jail before successfully appealing two out of three counts of cheque fraud. He was released on bail last week, with the result of the third appeal expected later this week.
The new case filed against him by Nakheel is over another alleged bounced cheque in relation to the purchase of a plot of land on the firm’s Dubai Waterfront development.
“If I go back to jail, I will not eat, I will die in there. I will go on a pure food and water hunger strike, because I’m not guilty,” Qurashi told Arabian Business on Tuesday. “But I know 100 percent that I will lose, because the courts do not look at any reason for bouncing cheques.”
During his previous term in prison, Qurashi was on hunger strike for more than 40 days, only ceasing when Dubai’s Attorney General agreed to review his case.
Qurashi’s legal team says the contract on the Dubai Waterfront plot stipulated an initial 20 percent deposit of AED8m paid to Nakheel, with subsequent payments staggered after the handover date. “This is on my contract, black and white, that both I and Nakheel have signed,” he said.
“Handover was supposed to be December 2008. Now they’re saying to me [handover will be] 2019,” Qurashi said. “In the meantime, those post-dated cheques… it was [Nakheel’s] responsibility to hold on to and take after they’d done [the] handover.”
Qurashi’s representatives claim Nakheel has in total taken AED22m from his bank account via post-dated security cheques. When one of these cheques bounced during Qurashi’s stint in jail, the developer filed a criminal charge against him, Qurashi says.
Qurashi claims Dubai’s Prosecutor has informed him if he wished to pursue a case against Nakheel for breach of contract, he would have to do so through civil courts. The charge filed against him by Nakheel is a criminal one, meaning if he is found guilty he could be sent back to jail.
“When I saw the prosecutor he told me very simply ‘go civil’, but what you’ve done – bouncing a cheque – is criminal,” Qurashi said.
No court date for the Nakheel case has yet been set, he added.
Nakheel did not immediately respond to Arabian Business’s request for comment on the case against Qurashi.
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